Alopecia is a common and distressing side effect of many chemotherapeutic agents and for which there is currently few effective preventive measures. In a recent study, thirty-five of forty-six patients receiving chemotherapy ranked alopecia as a more disturbing side effect than vomiting (Tierney et al, B. J. Cancer, 62:527-528, 1990).
Currently, those suffering from alopecia can only attempt to regrow lost hair by repeated applications of topical steroids or can attempt to maintain hair growth by topical application of minoxidil. Moreover, there are currently no approved therapeutic agents with the ability to prevent alopecia from occurring as a side effect during chemotherapy treatment, although there have been some promising studies. For example, using a young rat model, it has been demonstrated that ImuVert, a biologic response modifier prepared from the bacterium Serratia marcescens, protected the animals from alopecia induced by cytosine arabinoside or adriamycin (Hussein et al., Science 249: 1564-1566, 1990). In subsequent studies, similar protection from ARA-C-induced alopecia was observed from recombinant interleukin-1 (IL-1) beta (Jimenez et al., FASEB J. 1991). Despite these promising results, there remains a need for a safe and effective therapeutic agent that treats alopecia in those suffering from this disorder, and further, prevents chemotherapy-induced alopecia in those receiving cancer treatment.